'It smells like death:' Alabama endures New York City 'poop train'

[JosephDredd]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-alabama-poop-train-20180417-story.html

'It smells like death:' Alabama endures New York City 'poop train'

A stinking trainload of human waste from New York City is stranded in a tiny Alabama town, spreading a stench like a giant backed-up toilet — and the "poop train" is just the latest example of the South being used as a dumping ground for other states' waste.

In Parrish, Ala., population 982, the sludge-hauling train cars have sat idle near the little league ball fields for more than two months, Mayor Heather Hall said. The smell is unbearable, especially around dusk after the atmosphere has become heated, she said.

"Oh my goodness, it's just a nightmare here," she said. "It smells like rotting corpses, or carcasses. It smells like death."

All kinds of waste have been dumped in Georgia, Alabama and other Southern states in recent years, including toxic coal ash from power plants around the nation. In South Carolina, a plan to store radioactive nuclear waste in a rural area prompted complaints that the state was being turned into a nuclear dump.

In Parrish, townspeople are considering rescheduling children's softball games, or playing at fields in other communities to escape the stink.

Sherleen Pike, who lives about a half-mile from the railroad track, said she sometimes dabs peppermint oil under her nose because the smell is so bad.

"Would New York City like for us to send all our poop up there forever?" she said. "They don't want to dump it in their rivers, but I think each state should take care of their own waste."

Alabama's inexpensive land and permissive zoning laws and a federal ban on dumping New Yorkers' excrement in the ocean got the poop train chugging, experts say.

Nelson Brooke of the environmental group Black Warrior Riverkeeper, describes Alabama as "kind of an open-door, rubber-stamp permitting place" for landfill operators.

"It's easy for them to zip into a rural or poor community and set up shop and start making a ton of cash," he said.

The poop train's cargo is bound for the Big Sky landfill, about 20 miles east of Parrish. The landfill has been accepting the New York sewage sludge since early 2017. Previously, it was transferred from trains to trucks in nearby West Jefferson, but officials there obtained an injunction to keep the sludge out of their town.

The sludge "smells of dead rotting animals as well as human waste," West Jefferson's attorney said in a lawsuit against Big Sky Environmental LLC. It also caused the community to become "infested with flies," the complaint states.

After West Jefferson went to court, the train stopped in late January in Parrish, which lacks the zoning regulations to block the train cars. It's sat there ever since.

"We're probably going to look at creating some simple zoning laws for the town of Parrish so we can be sure something like this does not happen again," the Parrish mayor said. Hall said she's optimistic the sludge will all be trucked to the landfill soon.

New York City has discontinued shipping it to Alabama for the time being, said Eric Timbers, a city spokesman. Its waste, recovered from the sewage treatment process and often called "biosolids," has been sent out of state since the federal government in the late 1980s banned disposal in the Atlantic Ocean.

In an earlier trash saga, a barge laden with 3,186 tons of non-toxic paper and commercial garbage from Long Island and New York City wandered the ocean for months in 1987, seeking a place to dump it after plans by a private developer to turn it into methane gas in North Carolina fell through. It was turned away by North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Belize and the Bahamas.

Brooke's Black Warrior Riverkeeper group last year opposed continued permits for the Big Sky landfill. Rural parts of Alabama are "prime targets" for landfills that accept out-of-state waste, it argued, meaning "that Alabama was becoming a dumping ground for the rest of the nation."

Big Sky officials did not return multiple email and phone messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Nationally, the waste and recycling industry generates more than $93 billion in gross revenue annually, said Brandon Wright, a spokesman for the National Waste and Recycling Association. Wright said there are many reasons waste is sometimes transported out of state. There might not be enough landfill space nearby "and the waste has to go somewhere, so it gets transported out of state," he said.

Alabama and other Southern states have a long history accepting waste from around the U.S.

A former state attorney general once described a giant west Alabama landfill as "America's Pay Toilet." It was among the nation's largest hazardous waste dumps when it opened in 1977. At its peak, the landfill took in nearly 800,000 tons of hazardous waste annually.

Plans to dump coal ash in Southern states have been particularly contentious. Each year, U.S. coal plants produce about 100 million tons of coal ash and other waste; more than 4 million tons of it wound up in an Alabama landfill following a 2008 spill in Tennessee.

In Parrish, the mayor hopes the material in the train cars is removed before the weather warms up.

"We're moving into the summer, and the summer in the South is not forgiving when it comes to stuff like this," she said.

Classic 2018 America, imo

 

[Fawlty]

LOL.

It's unbelievable that we don't have giant spots dug out in the desert yet, for stuff we can't get rid of otherwise. We've had the tech for at least a decade+ to safely line gigantic pits. It would save so much money in the long run.

 

[mb23100]

That's messed up. I would be furious

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

93 billion a year -- some enterprising mofo figured out how to turn shit into gold

Although, shit-hole states took their moniker a little too literal here

 

[AznTrojan]

well... alabama is a shithole..

 

[HereticBD]

Oh' God, combined with the heat...

 

[Son of Jamin]

This shit train will forever be a stain on the poor people of Alabama! Imagine the smell of holier than thou New Yorker mentality combined with eggs Benedict’s at Delmonico’s...

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

http://www.hortibiz.com/item/news/turning-sewage-sludge-into-safe-fertilizer/

Biological waste from livestock has long been used to help make farm soil more fertile, but while human waste has similar potential benefits, its use presents more challenges. Sewage contains high concentrations of heavy metals and current treatment methods are unable to remove enough of these toxic metals to make biosolids safe for use on farms as fertilizer, so it often ends up being landfilled instead.

Now, however, researchers from Masdar Institute in the UAE have developed an energy-efficient, low-cost method for removing heavy metals from biosolids. The novel process has demonstrated the ability to remove over 90% of zinc and over 60% of copper from sewage sludge collected from the Masdar City wastewater treatment plant. This removal rate is significantly higher than any previously reported removal rates, and in the case of zinc, the removal was well below the tolerable concentration levels set by regulatory agencies.

 

[Ophydian]

Conservative agenda at work. De-regulate the EPA and this will become harder to stop for Southerns but keep voting against your better judgement because Guns & Abortion will keep
Away the poop. States like New York care about their environment and found places in the South that don’t. If you don’t believe in climate change then shitting up the environment can’t be too far off.

 

[HomerThompson]

That's messed up. I would be furious

I know, right? Fucking lousy Southerners complaining. They should feel grateful that they get to smell poop from people from a real State.

 

[mb23100]

Oh' God, combined with the heat...

In North Las Vegas there is a dude with a pig farm. When he started he was out in the middle of nowhere but now it's all built up around him. They've been trying to get him to move forever but he won't. Imagine living next to a pig farm when it's 120 degrees outside

Edit: just looked it up and apparently he moved

 

[sleepwalk]

Public health risk. There has to be something on the books for that.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

LOL.

It's unbelievable that we don't have giant spots dug out in the desert yet, for stuff we can't get rid of otherwise. We've had the tech for at least a decade+ to safely line gigantic pits. It would save so much money in the long run.

you know what's crazier
I wanna say I saw this YT doc recently that said NO nuclear waste worldwide is currently in permanent storage solutions.....ALL waste is currently in temporary, not exactly super high speed, containment areas often just chilling in water



wtf son

 

[jk7707]

 

[bushman505]

Alabama already smells like shit.

 

[kuromusha]

 

[curryjunkie]

That's what you get when you vote against that pesky regulation, that's the smell of freedom Boys! Take a big sniff!

 

[Bloodworth]

Other states bid to receive garbage. There is literally no space in some states on the coasts.

Landfills are fill

NJ is known for receiving contaminated and radioactive material.

 

[Headkicktoleg]

I know, right? Fucking lousy Southerners complaining. They should feel grateful that they get to smell poop from people from a real State.

I guess we found out where springfield is located.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_of_the_Titans

 

[Prime Rib]

In all my travels the people in Alabama were the absolute most unfriendly fuckers I've ever met. Let them smell shit.

Roll Tide you fucking 'Bamas.